What Organisations Can Learn from Personal Resilience
Background
Resilience, the ability to adapt, recover and grow through adversity, is often thought about as a personal quality. Yet, Avida’s recent panel discussion highlighted how the lessons we learn from personal resilience can serve as a blueprint for organisations seeking to build operational and organisational resilience, thereby enabling them to better prepare for and withstand crises of their own.
The event began with a deeply personal reflection from our speaker, Jenny Segal, who shared her experience of overcoming serious trauma. Her story illustrated that resilience is not an innate trait, but a skill developed through stress, support, and reflection. Research she conducted with 45 people for her book, “On Motivation: Personal & Professional Resilience”, reinforced this: while most individuals resilience grows stronger after adversity, some individuals’ resilience decreases - a reminder that increased resilience is not a guaranteed outcome from trauma. The key, the speaker suggested, lies in support networks, purposeful goals, and the courage to reflect honestly on one’s experiences.
This theme of reflection was consistent throughout the discussion. True resilience, whether it be personal or professional, depends on learning from setbacks. Whether that’s through an individual’s self-reflection or a company’s post-crisis review, creating time for open and safe learning is vital as, without it, the same mistakes are destined to repeat.
Resilience in the Workplace
The discussion then turned to the workplace itself. Toxic environments, the speaker’s research suggested, are among the most common sources of personal crises. When there is a toxic workplace culture, resilience weakens. For organisations, this insight is invaluable: Building a supportive culture isn’t just about wellbeing, it’s about operational strength. Leaders who foster trust, flexibility, and shared purpose equip their employees and teams with the necessary skills to adapt when things go wrong.
Drawing parallels between personal and organisational resilience, the panel highlighted similarities in mindset but also crucial differences. In financial crises, for instance, everyone is affected at once, leaving few external supports. Here, regulation, governance, and institutional learning become the “support network” that keeps the organisation steady.
Leadership emerged as the cornerstone of operational resilience. The most resilient organisations aren’t those that avoid crises but those that prepare, anticipate, and adapt to them. Training, scenario planning, and wargaming were all cited as ways to embed readiness into the culture of an organisation. Empowering individuals to act with initiative underpins the kind of collective resilience that survives leadership changes or market shocks.
The discussion also tackled a persistent tension: efficiency versus resilience. In the short term, investing in contingency planning or crisis simulation can feel inefficient, but as the panel pointed out, the true inefficiency lies in being unprepared. Boards must recognise building resilience not as a cost, but as a long-term investment in stability, adaptability, and preparedness.
Perhaps the most resonant insight came near the end: just as people can grow stronger through adversity, so too can organisations if they learn, adapt, and look after their employees. Resilience, in both cases, is about the psychological and physical journey which leads to transformative growth.
How Avida Can Help
Avida International offers a range of services to prepare an organisation’s executive function and/or trustee for dealing with crises. These include:
Incident Preparedness Planning (IPP)
· Bespoke crisis management reviews, including risk assessment, wargaming, strategy design, and communication services.
Crisis Management Workshop (CMW)
· Exercises to prepare and practise responses to potential crises.
If you would like to hear more about our services, please get in contact with one of our advisors.